Integritus Prime

After a discussion about the journey from medicine to wellness in light of lifestyle diseases, Dr. Margaret Cornelius and I are back with a follow up conversation in the same series. This one is entitled Beyond Medicine: Breaking out of the Lifestyle Trap.

You might ask what a lifestyle trap is and why we should care about it. As the word “lifestyle” implies, it’s all about how we live. When the way we live kills us off early, perhaps it’s useful to pay attention. At least, that’s what is happening in Fiji – people in their 30s and 40s are dropping dead of heart attacks. Diabetes is an epidemic here, and the leading cause of disability. Obesity, heart disease, and kidney disease are more prevalent than ever before.

In a paradise where local foods are rich in nutritional bounty, this is perplexing. Indeed, to understand the paradox of why people are committing suicide by the way they choose to live, we need to look underneath the surface. There are three main steps that our conversation covers:

1. Understand the Trap: The lifestyle trap includes coping mechanisms that we turn to when we lack contentment in our daily lives, but that make us feel worse. In short: bad habits that become addictive. We adopt harmful ways of coping with being dissatisfied with our lives and then wonder why we keep deteriorating mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
2. Understand the Why the Trap Exists: Digging a little deeper into why we choose such harmful habits and why we are unhappy, we find stress and trauma at the root of it. Due to negative childhood and adult experiences, we are impaired with low self-confidence, self-worth, self-esteem…you get the idea. Our conversation will probe deeply into the types of trauma and stress we all face.
3. Take Action and Understand Why You Should: This segment will cover what actions we can take, and why we should change our course of behavior. There is a strategy we can use to change daily actions, and the most obvious “why” is to improve and lengthen our lives and find that elusive happiness and contentment. Find out how.

In this conversation, we will delve into real examples and provide some practical and science-based tools to catalyze action. We recently presented Part 1: What is the Lifestyle Trap and how do you know you’re in it? Stay tuned to Alchemus Prime Wellness for the next two segments.